Read an Excerpt
Sons of the Soil
Migration and Ethnic Conflict in India
By Myron Weiner PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 1978 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-691-09379-6
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
This book examines the social and political consequences of internal migration in a multiethnic low-income society. The study begins with two simple hypotheses: 1. that the process of modernization, by providing incentives and opportunities for mobility, creates the conditions for increasing internal migration; and 2. that the modernization process nurtures the growth of ethnic identification and ethnic cohesion. These two processes are often antagonistic, since in a multiethnic society the one encourages the movement of individuals across cultural, linguistic, and ethnic regions, thereby changing the "mix" of ethnic groups within a given space, while the other often generates antimigrant sentiments among "local" people. Economic and demographic tendencies thus conflict with social, cultural, and political tendencies.
Interethnic relations in the multiethnic societies of the developing world are in a fluid state because of both these processes: migration is critical because it changes both the demographic and economic balance of groups within a given space. Hence, the "protection" of space and the economic opportunities that exist within it are often central objectives of the local population, while the expansion of opportunities within that space is a central objective of migrants. Migration within a multiethnic society, therefore, frequently has destabilizing effects and tends to arouse intense conflicts.
This book is a contribution to the study of ethnic demography, a field that brings together the concepts and tools of demographers and the concerns of social scientists with the study of ethnicity. Ethnic demography is a branch of political demography — a field of study that examines the size, composition, and distribution of population in relation to both government and politics, and deals with the political determinants and political consequences of population change.
In this study of ethnic demography, three concepts have proven to be particularly useful. The first is the notion of territorial ethnicity — the notion that certain ethnic groups are "rooted" in space. Whether a people see themselves as having an exclusive proprietary right over what takes place within that space, or whether they envisage sharing that space with others is a critical element in the patterns of integration within a political system.
The second is the notion of a dual labor market, with its conception of two types of jobs: those in what have been called "traditional," "marginal," "unorganized," or "informal" sectors, employing low-skilled manpower at low wages; as against the more "modern," "developed," "organized," and "formal" sectors that employ the skilled at higher wages. One scholar has distinguished between a "core" region, where centralized authority makes its appearance and industrial development becomes more advanced, and a "peripheral" region that is less developed and is usually at the "geographical extremities of the state," with the core region recruiting its low-skilled, low-wage labor from the peripheral region. Migrants from the periphery move to the core region to pursue low-paying jobs that the indigenous population does not want. Such a pattern can be found in much of Western Europe, where low-income migrants are imported from the "periphery" countries of the Mediterranean, or in the United States in areas where Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, or Blacks are employed in low-skilled, low-wage occupations.
Third is the idea of an ethnic division of labor. The dual labor market may be ethnically stratified, that is, each occupation in the system of occupational stratification recruits primarily from a single ethnic group. In the classical conception of an ethnic division of labor, migrants belonging to one ethnic group move from the periphery to work in subordinate positions to the ethnic group predominating in the core. The migrants settle into their own communities, where they develop culturally distinct ethnic associations that both strengthen their identity and provide them with social support; the migrants thus become separated from the local population in employment, housing, and in social, cultural, and even political organization. In a multiethnic society, or in a society that imports portions of its labor force, migration is often ethnically selective and a dual labor market is generally accompanied by an ethnic division of labor. Uneven development can thus take place between peoples as well as between places.
But it does not follow that migrants need be at the bottom of the labor market. In developing countries, as in advanced industrial societies, migrants can be engaged in a variety of occupations up and down the occupational hierarchy, and their education level can range from little or no education to the most advanced degrees. This simple and obvious observation about migration is often overlooked in much of the discussion of migration to the crowded cities of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, where it is all too often assumed that migrants are necessarily illiterate, unskilled, poor, and dwellers in slums and squatter settlements. Though in most developing countries this is the largest single group of migrants, there are other types of migrants whose characteristics — and therefore whose place in the ethnic division of labor — are quite different.
Migrants may be entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, traders, and moneylenders, generating new economic activities either in the "core" or in the "periphery." They may be self-employed professionals or employees who by virtue of their advanced education, their skills, and their drive are able to take positions that the local population are either unable or unwilling to take or, in some instances, from which they have been excluded.
The reasons for this particular ethnic division of labor are not easy to describe briefly. It may have resulted from policies adopted by the colonial government to provide facilities or preferences to some ethnic groups over others; it may have resulted from the character of the local economy, which made the new positions in the labor market less attractive to local people than to migrants; or it may have resulted from differences in the social structures and cultures of the various ethnic groups. Observers — and more importantly, participants — are likely to offer very divergent explanations: some (usually local people) will emphasize the political element that made it possible for one ethnic group to "exploit" another; others (usually migrants) will emphasize the "cultural" differences that led one ethnic group to take advantage of opportunities more successfully than others. But whatever the explanation, the result may be the emergence of another sector, while "locals" remain in the traditional sector or in the marginal parts of the emerging economy.
An ethnic division of labor — even one with the migrants on top of the occupational hierarchy — does not necessarily result in ethnic strife. In multiethnic plural societies diverse ethnic groups may interact in the marketplace, but maintain their cultural diversity, all under the control of a state system dominated by a single ethnic group. Under these circumstances there may be relatively little conflict among ethnic groups. This level of "integration" also seems likely when each group maintains its spatial exclusiveness, when there is little in the way of social mobility, and when there are few new resources over which ethnic groups may compete.
It is not inequalities between ethnic groups that generate conflicts, but competition. Inequalities, real or perceived, are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for ethnic conflict; there must also be competition for control over or access to economic wealth, political power, or social status. There are a number of conditions under which such competition takes place; under each of these the existing ethnic division of labor may become questioned by one or more ethnic groups.
First, when the ethnic division of labor between migrants (and their descendants) and nonmigrants parallels class relationships that ordinarily have a high conflictual potential, as between industrial managers and workers, landlords and peasants, grain merchants and agricultural producers, the police and the public, shopkeepers and consumers, and so on, competition may occur. For whatever reasons — and there may be many — these exchange relationships become conflictual, and when the groups in the exchange belong to different ethnic communities, there is a high potential for ethnic conflict.
In other words, conflicts that ordinarily take place in any society that is modernizing can become defined as an ethnic problem because of the ethnic division of labor. Marxists often dismiss these ethnic conflicts as a form of "false consciousness," that disguises the "real" class tensions. What is "real" and what is "false" in human relationships is a deep epistemological issue that will not be resolved by mere empirical facts; here we can only note the empirical facts themselves — that when there is a close fit between the class division and ethnic division, conflicts generally take on an ethnic character that often transcends whatever class differences exist within each of the ethnic groups.
Second, when the local population seeks access to occupations that they previously did not seek or from which they were once excluded, conflict may ensue. In short, the ethnic division of labor may no longer be acceptable because there is increasing mobility, or aspirations for increasing mobility, on the part of the indigenous population. Such aspirations may be stimulated by a variety of factors — an expansion of the educational system to provide new opportunities for local children, a decline in agricultural income or employment that leads agriculturalists or their children to try to enter urban occupations, or the stimulant to change provided by the growth of the mass media.
To anticipate a central proposition of this book, middleclass nativist movements in opposition to migrants tend to emerge in those communities where the local population has recently produced its own educated class that aspires to move into jobs held by migrants — in the civil service, as teachers in the local schools, as clerks, managers, and technicians. In a situation in which the employment market in the modern sector is not expanding as fast as the number of entrants, local middle-class aspirants may view migrants as blocks to their mobility.
Third, conflict may occur when a change in the power structure stimulates competition by giving one group the political resources for modifying or transforming the ethnic division of labor. Hence, the movement into political power of an indigenous population that is economically and socially in subordinate positions typically stimulates efforts on the part of the new power group to change the occupational structure. The example of the Burmans in relation to Indians, Malays in relation to Chinese, and Ugandans in relation to Asians all come to mind. In India, examples are the Marathis in relation to Tamils and the Assamese in relation to Bengalis.
Much of the discussion of core-periphery relationships and "internal colonialism" has focused on the ways in which the dominant "core" population dominates the migrants from the periphery — the English in relation to the Welsh and Irish, the French in relation to Brittany, and so on. What this analysis neglects are those situations in which population flows are in the other direction, and it is the migrants who become dominant. In the post-colonial phase those who come to exercise governmental authority often belong to the subordinate economic group in the ethnic division of labor, especially when power shifts to those who are the most numerous. To put it another way, the ethnic division of labor and the political division of labor may become divergent. In this situation, governmental authority is likely to be directed toward restructuring the ethnic divisions of labor — a situation fraught with conflict.
An additional potentially explosive situation exists when the new power elite is economically and socially subordinate to the ethnic group that dominates the urban center in which the capital is located, that is, when the geographic "core" and the political "core" are held by different ethnic groups. This is what made the cities of Rangoon (with its Indian population), Kuala Lumpur (Chinese migrants), Gauhati in Assam (Bengali and Marwari migrants), and Bombay (Tamil migrants, and others) particularly explosive centers. One can find similar parallels in the post-Ottoman, post-Hapsburg urban centers of eastern and southeastern Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, when the governments were dominated by nationalist elites representing the ethnic majority, while the urban centers were predominantly dominated by ethnic minorities.
Perhaps, ultimately, it is the development process itself that undermines the existing ethnic division of labor by opening up new avenues for educational, social, economic, and political advancement. There may be new opportunities in the industrial sector as a result of industrial expansion. Or on the land, because government has "opened" up new lands through irrigation works, land clearance, and rural colonization schemes. Or in education, which has been opened to ethnic groups that had hitherto been excluded. There may be new opportunities in administration, either because the bureaucracy has expanded its size, or because it has become more open and less ethnically restrictive. And finally, the political process itself may create new opportunities by permitting competition for public office. Tensions are most often produced when modernization opens some sphere more than others — when, for example, local people are given new access to political power, but not to education or to employment, or to education, but not to employment, or to employment in the public sphere, but not in the private.
The arenas within which migrants and locals compete are thus defined by what the development process and the political process have opened, for a critical dimension of ethnic conflict is the extent to which groups battle over access to and control over new resources. Moreover, to the extent that group interactions lead to a sharpening of ethnic distinctions, then an adversary relationship emerges that, in turn, further strengthens ethnic identities, promotes ethnic solidarity, and intensifies ethnic exclusiveness. An adversary relationship between ethnic groups also undermines the growth of class-based relationships, for it inhibits the development of class conflicts within ethnic groups even when there are growing economic and social inequalities within the ethnic group.
In this struggle for access to resources, ethnic groups also create their own resources. Most important is the development of various ethnic infrastructures: ethnic restaurants, religious institutions, newspapers, neighborhood associations, charitable organizations, welfare institutions, medical facilities, burial associations, and educational centers. These institutions also become centers for the emergence of ethnic leaders who try to speak on behalf of the community: newspaper editors, heads of ethnic associations, the clergy, and elected political leaders.
Not only migrants but local groups also organize new resources in this struggle. Indeed, to the extent that local groups seek to restructure the ethnic division of labor, they must build political resources — new journals to articulate the claims of the local people, literary associations to attract the emerging intelligentsia and, ultimately, political organizations to press nativist claims upon government.
In this study we view policy not as an attempt by government to find a solution to the tension between natives and migrants, but rather as an instrument by one group or another in the struggle to maintain or transform the ethnic division of labor. Indeed, government may be willing to tolerate and even generate ethnic strife if it serves to reduce migration or reverse the flow, or to bring about compliance with policies intended to change the ethnic division of labor.
This book examines the political consequences of interethnic migrations in India. It explores the arenas for competition between migrants and locals in selected regions of the country, the struggle for access to and control over new resources in these regions, the role that policies play in the struggle for restructuring the ethnic division of labor, and the kinds of consequences that have resulted from these various state and central government interventions. By focusing on a single country we have an opportunity to explore in depth how these processes operate, and to consider some of the alternative ways in which government policy makers — if they chose to — might attempt to restructure the ethnic division of labor so as to achieve greater equality among ethnic groups, without at the same time restricting the spatial and social mobility of some of its own people.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Sons of the Soil by Myron Weiner. Copyright © 1978 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
